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5 outrageous knit sweaters from movies and TV that you can actually wear in real life

Posted on August 26 2015

Hollywood stylists have a great eye for picking out beautifully kitschy sweaters. We’re especially fond of versions that occupy that awkward space between dad clothes and hipster excess.

Here, we salute the best of these spectacularly daggy-cool fashion moments in film and on television, plus tell you where you can snap up replicas of each look.

1. The cardigan from Starsky and Hutch

Fancy yourself a bit of a cardigan-wearing but nonetheless streetwise and kind of intense Southern Californian detective type? Sounds like you need a Starsky sweater, stat!

The Mexican design was made famous in the hit 1970s television show Starsky and Hutch, when detective David Michael Starsky (aka American actor Paul Michael Glaser) donned the loud and proud cardigan.

The cardigan was actually Glaser’s very own sweater. Now it can be yours, too. Get it here.

2. The Dude from The Big Lebowski

The 1998 cult classic film The Big Lebowski features perhaps the most famous kitschy sweater ever: The Dude.

Worn by amiable unemployed slacker Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski (actor Jeff Bridges), the sweater was originally named the Westerley and developed by the Pendleton knitting company in the 1970s. It drew inspiration from the distinctively patterned designs of Cowichan sweaters hand-knitted by tribes from Vancouver Island, Canada.

A legend was born. Now, across the US, Lebowski Fests draw crowds of “Achievers”, troupes of dancing bowling pins, and character look-alikes. You can buy stuffed animals, action figures and, of course, Dude sweaters new and old.

“That was knitted by a friend of (Italian costume designer) Milena Canonero,” Mr Vitali told The New York Times. “Stanley wanted something that looked handmade, and Milena arrived on the set one day and said, ‘How about this?’ It was just the sort of thing that a kid that age would have liked.”

Either way, you can grab a handmade Apollo sweater replica – in both adults and kids sizes – over here.